Re: Boot from External USB drive

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<amneelvan-googl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1144957260.652866.323830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi:
I have 2 hard drives for my laptop. Both of them have XP installed on
it. I swap them when I need to boot from the other.

I am wondering if I can boot directly from external USB hard drive
which already has a operating system on it.

Can some on help?
Thanks,

AM


AM:
We have never been successful booting the XP OS from a USB external HD. Over
the years there have been many newsgroup contributors and others who have
claimed to have done so. Usually their claim is couched in phrases like "as
long as the motherboard's BIOS supports this capability", or some such.
We've worked with a large variety of motherboard's that presumably had this
"capability" but as I've indicated, we've never been able to boot an XP OS
from a USB/Firewire EHD. And, I might add, we've never come across a single
*confirmed* report where this capability was achieved.

Having said this, you might want to take a look at this fairly recent Fred
Langa article where Fred purports to have come up with a process to achieve
this "bootability". See
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticleSrc.jhtml?articleID=177102101

Also, a recent poster ("emanuel") to a XP newsgroup claimed that he too has
come up with a methodology to do this as well. See
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

Let us know how you make out.
Anna


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